What I learned at Ecole Philippe Gaulier

Dear Teachers and Friends,

The voices in my head have kindly reminded me that I am currently enrolled for university credits for my study at Ecole Phillipe Gaulier. Of course I have not forgotten this, as over 1/4th of my grant money has been thrown into the garbage bin paying university fees. Another 1/3rd fell through the giant crack between the dollar and the Euro. Whoops!

Luckily I work part time as a prostitute, giving old men hand jobs in Bois de Bologne.

J/K!

It feels so rewarding to be a hard-working, responsible student. To turn in assignments on time. To make regular reports. Which reminds me. The voices in my head said to me "Harlan, you really should be writing about your expeiences with Philippe Gaulier. All of the useful things that you have learned."

And I asked the voices, "My dear friends" (I am a bit British when I speak to the voices in my head) "My dear friends, I am afraid to explain what I actually learned."

Of course the voices politely insisted that I explain myself. You see, I was awarded a lot of money to study with Mr Gaulier. A lot of money. And at a minimum, for me to put this money to good use, I should be able to write a full report on what I have learned.

Well, I am growing a bit exasperated with the voices. I could fabricate something. "At Ecole Philippe Gaulier, I learned how to listen." But the voices will not be very impressed by this. I already spent for years training how to be a good listener on the stage. "Well yes," I would reply. "But what I discovered at this school is that when I get lost on stage, I stop listening. And when I stop listening, I stop playing." Ah this is starting to sound a bit more useful now!

I will be frank. I hate writing this shit.





It's total shit. Because I cannot actually articulate in words the process I have been through at this Ecole. Yes I have been insulted, humiliated, and wildly entertained. But none of that is what the school was about. And the school is NOT about theory. Theory is not unimportant, it is just irrelevant. One could theorize for months about what happens in this school. And here is the key. Here is my beautiful artistic discovery of a lifetime. Here is why I spent thousands of dollars studying with Philippe Gaulier:

All of my theories, my ideas, ALL of them. They are tiny compared to what happens onstage when I play instead of trying to make an idea work.

That is it. Thousands of dollars for that.

I am not joking now.

Best lesson ever.








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I have an idea. I go onstage and try to make it work:

Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop.


I have NO idea. I go onstage and I search for a game.

No game?

Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop. Flop.

But if I can find the game. And play it. And not PLAY but just play the game. And be lost trying to figure the game out. And be a human being who is lost and playing and having a good time then is lost and then falls silent listening and trying to figure out the game and then and then and then and then

Maybe the Flop is held at bay.

And something happens. Something that is bigger than an idea.
Something that sparks 10,000 ideas and 5000,00000000000 theories in one microsecond. That makes Roland Barthes and Noam Chomsky looks like snivelling blahblahs.

And that is it.

And right now, I have no idea how to do this on the stage.

And no one can teach it to me.

I have to find it for myself.
It will take a very long time. I am a slow learner this way.
I will come back maybe in a few years and try again.

I need to live a bit, to experience a bit of life, before I will be capable of doing what I dream to do on the stage.


And voila. That is what I learned.



I hope you voices are happy now.

I learned that I am young, I expect to much of myself, I work too hard, I don't understand life at all.

I learned to laugh at my own arrogance, my snobbery, my absurd expectations and my cheap sentimentality.

And I learned to laugh at the arrogance of others, their horrible habits and their bizarre ideas about the world. To laugh and to enjoy being alive. Because an artist who only seeks what is useful, what improves a society, what will save people is not an artist at all but a Marxist-Leninist shitbag. I was trained in America to be useful always. Not by this or that but by everything around me. To make myself useful. And art is not useful. Art makes the Useful feel they have lived so little. And that is a powerful thing.

It does not interest me to heal the world. To make the world a better place one person at a time. Because I believe that the world will always be a messy unfair place and thus I have no desire to change it. The naive arrogance I once harbored- that I could somehow rescue the world- now seems so silly.

The best I could ever hope to do is create something that makes people more alive. Whatever the hell that means anyways, it sounds good so I will stick with it.

The world is big. And my ideas about the world are small.

Thank you, Philippe Gaulier, for your hard lesson.